Political research and practitioner approaches: a review of the research methods used in voting behaviour research

Quantitative research has been the dominant methodological approach used to study voting behaviour. There is an emerging recognition, however, that there are alternative ways of attempting to understand how voters decide. The academic preoccupation with measurement, reliability, validity and generalisability may obscure some of the findings that are uncovered by practitioners using qualitative research. Practitioners of politics, both in the USA and the UK, tend to utilise both methods when formulating policy and exploring voter attitudes towards these policies. This paper will review the arguments for each tradition and examine the apparent divergence of practitioner and academic political research. Finally, it will look at how both positivist and interpretivist methods can be utilised to complement each other when attempting to build a picture of voting behaviour.